I’m in San Jose, which is in Santa Clara County, aka the South Bay. My impression of those days is that air quality was proportional to latitude, and areas further north up the Peninsula, like Mountain View, would have had it proportionately worse. There were reports of school closures, and stores running out of masks (one report used the term “respirators”, but I wonder how accurately).

The Wine Country fires were made possible, ultimately, by global warming. A prolonged drought punctuated by a sudden rainy season turned California into the proverbial tinder box. They’re already pretty sure the proximate cause was electrical fires caused by high winds whipping the overhead power lines running through wooded areas. The electrical utility, PG&E, somehow provides power into some incredibly remote and rugged terrain.

And I think that model of country living supported by a vast extended infrastructure is going to become less viable and more expensive to maintain as time goes own. The power lines are a canonical example: It’s way too expensive to put them underground through the mountains and forests, and so they’re eternally vulnerable to winds and wildlife and the steady growth of the trees. Ironic to think that the plans of the “preppers” and survivalists might be thwarted by nature, as it becomes apparent that big cities are the safest places to live in the future. It’s economical to put electrical lines underground in the city, there’s an integrated public-safety system operating over a relatively small area, firefighters can drive to any fire and don’t need helicopters, extensive medical services, and so on. And the general economies of higher density urban environments (with proper planning to keep them human) are ultimately going to break the criminally-irresponsible zoning policies that mandate low-density housing (and consequently brutal housing costs). Big cities are the future.

It felt like Pompeii, fifty miles away from where the real suffering was going on. The ever-present smell of smoke and the orange light made it impossible to forget, for long, what was going on up there. We’re used to wildfire in the west, but it used to be unthinkable for them to roar into town, force thousands to evacuate, and to kill people.

When you think of San Jose, you probably picture rows of ticky-tacky houses along treeless streets under a beating sun. The treeless part is wildly inaccurate–much of San Jose is so densely wooded it’s officially classified urban forest. Along many streets around here, the treetop canopies interlock, and when the leaves get dry, it’s scary. San Jose could have a forest fire one day.

What’s happening up in the wine country has a spooky reality to me fifty miles away. It could happen here.